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The plane made one aborted effort to land in heavy rain and winds of roughly 30mph, in the aftermath of Typhoon Matmo, which passed over the island a day earlier.

As it made its second attempt it lost contact with the control tower and fell almost 100ft into two houses in the neighbouring village of Xixi, roughly 700ft away from the north end of the runway.

"I heard a huge crash," said one villager in Xixi, named as Mr Wang, on Taiwanese television. "At first I thought it was thunder but then I smelt gas. Then I saw the fire outside and there were passengers covered in blood crawling from the plane. Then there was a second explosion." Some of the victims were found under the wreckage of the plane, which broke into three pieces. Seven of the ten survivors managed to crawl out of the flames to safety.

"Inside the wreckage the chairs were scattered everywhere and bodies were piled on top of each other. Some survivors managed to hang onto their chairs, showing only faint signs of life," said Cai Peiru, a Taiwanese naval officer and a member of the emergency rescue team.

The mayor of Magong city, where the crash occurred, said one family had been entirely destroyed by the accident. Chen Ruiqing was board with his wife, his two daughters, his sister's son and his wife. All six died.

"Chen's daughter just got married and such an unfortunate thing happened," said the mayor, Su Kunxiong.

Shares of TransAsia Airways fell 7 per cent in the wake of the crash.

TransAsia Airways is a Taiwan-based airline with a fleet of around 23 Airbus and ATR aircraft, operating chiefly short-haul flights on domestic routes as well as to mainland China, Japan, Thailand and Cambodia.